Phnom Penh, 21 April 2010
Your Venerable Monks
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Today it is my great pleasure to attend inaugurating ceremony of a new building center of the Secretariat of National Anti-Terrorism Committee. The ceremony takes place right after the people nationwide had delightedly celebrated the recent traditional Happy Khmer New Year, Year of the Tiger, Buddhism Era 2554, which was on the 14th, 15th, and 16th April 2010.
This ceremony is another new occasion for me to visit and talk with officials and armed forces of the Secretariat of National Anti-Terrorism Committee who have made many successes and achievements so far, also we will observe together new development of situation to which we must pay great attention and be prepared for in order to fight against, prevent and combat terrorism threat.
Indeed, this new achievement stemmed from effort of all of us, especially the leadership and officials of the secretariat of National Committee for Anti-terrorism, to expand center and to modernize of facility and materials for increased effectiveness and productivity of daily operations. Taking this opportunity, I would like to express my high appreciation for success and result that the secretariat of National Committee for Anti-terrorism has hard attained thus far by scarifying physical and moral force for the cause of overcoming all kinds of obstacles with sense of loving the nation and consciousness of determination to protect national security, making contribution to building full peace, stability, safety and social order for society and helping make and maintain achievements which is high interest of the nation.
Undeniably, these successes and achievements are clear evidence reflecting sharp determination of the leadership, officials and armed forces of the secretariat of National Committee for Anti-terrorism in contribution to implementation of national development policies that lead to materialize spirit of Rectangular Strategy Phase II i.e. growth, employment, equity and efficiency.
Taking this opportunity, on behalf of the government I would like to highly value endeavor of the secretariat of National Committee for Anti-terrorism to ensure engagement for this task and to build institutional capacity which allow this institution to make remarkable progress.
Obviously, witnessing human resource in June 2006, this agency had only 10 staff; however, at the present it has 504 staff in total comprising of military officers, police officers, non-commissioned military and police officers, soldiers, policemen, and has succeeded in building institutional capacity and developing equipments base for active and effective anti-terrorism. For that, National Police Force, Military Police, bodyguard unit, military units and a number of civil institutions such as Ministry of Economy and Finance, National Bank of Cambodia, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Public Works and Transportation, State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, General Department of Customs and Excise, General Department of Cam-control, international sea ports and international airports are always supporting and promoting security and tirelessly contributing to capacity building through training and human resource development, exchange of experience, information collection and analysis for combating all kinds of terrorism at national, regional and world level.
At the same time, I would like to admire all media networks for disseminating and educating people to understand danger of terrorism activities and extremism and have them always stand with the government for the cause of fighting with dangerous enemies who are terrorists. Along with that, I would like to express my complement to our people for being committed to and bring our nation with full security, peace and without terrorism.
Moreover, I would like to compliment the cooperation among ASEAN countries and the region against terrorism. Those countries always consider Cambodia a partner county and offer both bilateral and multilateral support to the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee to strengthen effort against tourism activities.
In front of us, this new building will enhance work effectiveness and continuous progresses that the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee has to fulfill and be responsible. This achievement is a strong foundation for all works. In this spirit, I hope to see the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee improves its work and expands the capacity of the institution and cooperation in this courageous mission. The Committee has to work harder and maintain achievements, with high conscious and continuity for the benefit of organization and strengthen effectiveness and capacity to fight against terrorism. Moreover, it has to response to international integration and cooperation for the cause of peace and national and social development both in present and future.
The Royal Government has always been determined in the strengthening of peace, stability and public order in the society. Keeping this in mind, we have strengthen and enhance full capacity of our armed forces and actively joint with international communities to prevent and crack down terrorist activities and sabotages both inside and outside country as well as take necessary measures to beef up effectiveness on prevention and cracking down all sort of crime activities that might create fear and cause instability to Cambodia society. At the same time, the Royal Government of Cambodia consider terrorist act as the cruelest crime that bring loss of lives for all races, ages and places. Disaster created by terrorism is a global challenge that requires joint effort from every country of world to be effective.
Despite geographical location, political, social and economic condition of Cambodia do not place Cambodia as a primary target for terrorism, Cambodia is necessary to build its capacity for bother preparing itself to ensure safety of Cambodian people and contribution in fighting against terrorism in order to eliminate terrorism activities that put people of all countries in horror. Therefore, it is important to continue improving capacity, skill and professionalism to carry our duties and strengthen cooperation, strengthen quality, ensure honesty to the nation, respecting the constitution and disciple and morality, which are necessary to fight, foil and prevent terrorism.
Terrorism could happen in all forms and constantly adapt to the situation that required detail studies and comprehension. For example, the 9/11 even is up to now, 3144 days. In this event, eleven people hijacked four US plans and unexpectedly used them for bombardment. Two plans were flown to hit the World Trade Center in New York, while the third plan hit the Pentagon in Washington and the fourth plan hit the ground. All people in those plans were killed. This event claimed 3000 lives, most of them were American and only 85 people were foreigners. Alqaida declared its responsibility for creating this scheme.
Two years after, on the 12 October 2002, two night clubs in Bali, Indonesia, were exploded and killed 202 people and injured 209 more. On the 5th August 2003, a suicide car-bomb detonated the exterior of the Mariotte Hotel in Jakarta and killed 12 and injured 15 people. On the 9th September 2004, a bomb was detonated outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and killed 11 people. Moreover, at Bali a bomb was detonated against killed 23 and injured 100 people on the 1st October 2005.
Outside the region, many bombs have been exploded and killed many people. For example, on the 11th March 2004 in Madrid, a bomb exploded in the subway and killed 192 people. On the 7th July 2005 in London, three bombs in subway and four on buses were exploded and killed 50 and injured 700 people. Jordan, Egypt and Morocco had also been attacked by terrorists.
Through this, we must continue to seek deep understanding about the nature of terrorism, its intention, and its effect on the socio-economy. By building the capacity and getting a clear understanding of these issues can largely protect and prevent people from the threat pose by terrorism.
In this spirit, we must continue to implement of national anti-terrorism policy that rely on a people-wide network that is preventive, protective, and offensive through a firm and joint mechanism between the government and the people, government and the private sector in eliminating and eradicating the threat of terrorism on our nation. Along with that, our strategy has to be timely flexible because the threat of the terrorism always keeps changing. We have to bear in mind as always that leaving the terrorism to be uncontrollable can cause bad omen to the socio-economic development, especially tourism sector and foreign direct investment. In this context, we have to tirelessly continue our work ahead even though there is no sign of terrorism happening here, we have to strictly and actively fulfill our duties. Based on this foundation, I would like the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee, National Police, Military Police, Armed Forces, State Agencies and all people to continue to jointly upgrade the spirit of high carefulness and must not be careless, however, we must remember that carelessness is underestimation, and underestimation is the way toward disaster.
At the same time, the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee must continue to be a coordinating center for all national and international agencies in all sorts of operation against terrorism and continue enhancing the activities and capacity for the secretariat and all national competent authorities in preventing and fighting against all kinds of terrorism acts.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to encourage the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee to prepare the anti-terrorism maneuver because it is an exercise for all competent authorities to nicely and effectively coordinate and cooperate with each others as witnessed so far. The preparation of the 2009 practice in Sihanouk province brought about 3 satisfactory tremendous results: (1) all competent authorities including police, military police, infantry armed forces, navy, various departments and units in the province have been effectively put under the leadership of a head of General Unit Commander, (2) departments and other units know how to cooperate in solving problems of terrorism with spirit of high responsibility and (3) departments and units are truly creative with high responsibility to fulfill the duties to mitigate the crisis caused by terrorism acts. For instance, we have noted that throughout the provinces there are 3 ambulances, but the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee has conducted the simulation of which 60 people were killed and injured in order to test the ability of the provincial authority in handling the situation. At the end, the provincial governor, provincial health department and the port authority have jointly solved the issue successfully by mobilizing other vehicles to help transport the victims and have them quickly sent to the hospitals escorted by police motorcycles. For this year, the Council of Ministers has instructed the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee to prepare Multi-Sector Anti-Terrorism Maneuver at the Phnom Penh International Airport in which I have instructed to prepare the test for the spy from all institutions to try to work together in order to jointly solve the crisis and based on this foundation, we will be able to further improve cooperation among those spies. We actually believe that there will be no terrorism act happening in Cambodia, but only such maneuver that can be used as the training platform for our armed forces. This maneuver can make our competent officers more skillful and responsive to overcome actual event successfully.
In this spirit, the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee must continue the work of collecting and sharing data, building capacity to fight, especially against terrorism acts, improving information technology, binding information data to become an information bank that can facilitate the analysis and research. Moreover, the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee must use small or big scale maneuvers as a way toward improving quality and efficiency for all related competent institutions for anti-terrorism works.
In this regard, I strongly believe that all related ministries/institutions; private sector and all people will contribute to share cooperation more actively for the cause of ensuring peace, stability, safety and social order for the society and the socio-economic progress of Cambodia. Through this, I would like to appeal to all relevant ministries/institutions, authorities, private sector and all people to continue supporting and contributing to the mission of the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee more intensively with high spirit of responsibility in order to better maintain more favorable climate for investment, tourism and business in Cambodia.
At the end, together with the official inauguration of the “New Building Center of the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee” today, I would like to wish Samdech Chief and Deputy Chief of Monks, Venerable Monks, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, National and International Guests the four gems of Buddhist blessing: Longevity, Nobility, Health ad Strength.
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